1. Farah’s Revenge – Reginald St. James


    Date: 12/23/2023, Categories: Reluctance Author: jxa2012

    ... didn’t fuss much, and were little reminders of Jack. I thought they both inherited Jack’s personality – serious, independent, and anxious not to burden anyone.
    
    The weeks went by, and Darius’s eyes grew to be a brighter blue rather than fading to brown.
    
    “My mother was from the Azeri border area,” I said to Hossain to allay his doubts. “She had light brown eyes – amber we called them. And there are many in her family with blue eyes. The gene is recessive, as you know.”
    
    “True, true,” he said, and his doubts seemed quelled.
    
    My breasts were fuller now with mother’s milk. As I fed young Darius, I recalled with a pang how much Jack had delighted in suckling on my nipples while I was lactating with Noor. The memories tormented me, and Hossein often found me crying with Darius suckling on my breasts.
    
    “What is the matter?” he always asked.
    
    “Postpartum,” I always responded. “Crazy hormonal imbalances after pregnancy.”
    
    “You women are so weak,” he would reply.
    
    *
    
    Darius was two months old when my phone buzzed in the middle of the day. Hossein was at work, and I was home with the children. I looked at my phone face and saw it was Reginald St. James. I disconnected the call, but it buzzed again immediately. He kept calling and I saw that he would not stop, so I picked it up.
    
    “What do you want?” I asked, my tone belligerent.
    
    “I think you know, Farah.”
    
    “Tell me anyway.”
    
    “My new CEO, Martin Kinsella, and I,” said St. James. “We’ve been through every nook ...
    ... and cranny of the Foncault Group systems and accounts. We’ve been aided by our accounting department and by external accounting consultants. We’ve found Foncault Group accounts in Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, Vanuatu, Luxembourg, as well as a few other tax havens. But we cannot find the codes anywhere. We have no way of accessing them – we don’t even know how much is in them.”
    
    “I sent you the codes by secure email, Mr. St. James. And saved them in the system. Jack made sure to save the codes very securely so only those with authorized credentials could find them. Keep looking.”
    
    “I have used the best accounting and IT talent on the planet, Ms. Hojjat. They assure me the information is not in the system. This is blackmail.”
    
    “Blackmail is your game, Mr. St. James, not mine. It’s your company, your system. The information was sent to you and put into the corporate IT system as required by the law. It is in there. I no longer work for you and have no obligation to tell you anything further.”
    
    “I can get you arrested for embezzlement –”
    
    “For what?” I laughed. “The money is in your corporate accounts.”
    
    “You put it in there behind access codes. You have a legal obligation to give those to me.”
    
    “Check your accounting statements, Mr. St. James. It states clearly that you, as chairman, must be sent all access codes. I have email records proving that we did that. If you can’t find them, it’s your problem, not mine. Haul me into court if you ...
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